House of the Wannsee Conference
The councillor of commerce Paul Richard Herz was born in Berlin in 1853 as the son of Wilhelm Herz and his wife Cäcilie née Marckwald. He came from an old Jewish merchant family. In 1823 Salomon Herz ran a corn wholesale business in Berlin and a beet oil-mill in Wittenberge on the Elbe River, the first oil business-house in Germany.
In 1896, his son Wilhelm Herz founded a rubber goods factory in Berlin and directed the oil-mill. Wilhelm Herz was a member of the council of elders of the Berlin Merchants‘ Association and he was elected first president of the Berlin Trading Company in 1902. He was one of the co-founders of the Schultheiss brewery where he was the chairman of the board of directors for 43 years. In addition he held the post of director of a lignite mining company and he was an active member of the Jewisch community. On his 90th bithday, he became the first merchant to be conferred the title of ‘Excellency‘ which was normally reserved for senior civil servants.
After the death of his father, Paul Herz directed the oil-mill together with his cousin. In 1889, he had married Ida Herz née Marckwald. The couple remained childless.
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The villa of the oil-mill owner Paul Herz in no. 52-54 Am Großen Wannsee was built in 1891/92 by Wilhelm Martens, a pupil of Martin Gropius, at a cost of approx. 235,000 Reichsmark.
The villa was built in the eclectic style, i.e. different architectural styles were mixed. The villa had a floor area of 400 square metres and at the time, the site comprised 7790 square metres. The property served as a summer residence. It was only later, that the neighbouring sites were developed. In 1913, the Arnhold orchard was laid out and in 1914, the Marlier villa – which is the Memorial Site House of the Wannsee Conference today – was built. In 1913, Paul Herz purchased the former joiner’s workshop Krüger. He then owned 13,604 square metres of land. In 1903, the architect Otto Stahn had an additional greenhouse and a horse stable built. Herz also posessed a palm house where agaves, palm-trees and pineapples overwintered during the cold season and decorated the terraces in summer. |
From the terrace of the Herz villa one had a particularly beautiful view of the Alsen villa, the Emperor’s Pavilion and the Sandwerder and Schwanenwerder peninsulas. Today, this view is partly obstructed by additional buildings, boathouses on neighbouring sites and dense vegetation.
In 1926, the Herz villa changed its owner. The chocolate manufacturer Nelson Faßbender bought the villa from Ida Herz. Nelson Faßbender was born in Chicago in 1883, but his family soon moved back to Berlin. After he had passed the ‘Abitur‘, he started to work in his father’s factory.
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The company was founded in Berlin in 1863 by his father Heinrich Faßbender. He specialized in the production of finest chocolate. In 1905, his son became the co-owner of the jam factory and by 1927, he was the sole owner of both Berlin companies. Faßbender ran about 50 branches in Germany and by 1930, his company was the most important company of its kind. He employed about 300 workers and salaried staff. |
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In World War I, Nelson Faßbender was cavalry captain of the Reich and he was arwarded the Iron Cross First and Second Class. After he had acquired the Herz villa, he had a riding arena built on the site. In the early thirties, he planted an oak-tree in the garden of the Herz villa in honour of the ‘Führer‘ Adolf Hitler.
In 1936, Faßbender sold his villa to the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Workers‘ Front). In 1937, he took advantage of the propitious moment and moved into the ‘aryanized‘ villa of the Czapski family in no. 1-3 Straße zum Heckeshorn. The villa had been built for Elsa Sophie Czapski née Oppenheimer in 1922. The Czapskis were Jewish and emigrated to the United States.
From then on, the chocolate manufacturer lived in the Czapski villa with his wife, a former circus rider named Maria Kallweit (1880-1964), who was considered to be socially not acceptable in the Alsen Colony. Nelson Faßbender rejected his own children and they did not receive their share of the inheritance. In 1925, Nelson Faßbender adopted his foster-son Albert.
Albert Faßbender
Albert Faßbender, born in Saarbrücken on 30th June 1897, was confirmed in his right-wing extremist political views by his foster-father, the chocolate manufacturer Nelson Faßbender. In World War I, he voluntarily went to the front. From 1920 to 1924, he was a member of the Roßbach volunteer corps which he illegally supported with arms. This is why he was held on remand for several weeks.
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Since 1st February 1933, Albert Faßbender was a member of the SS and by 1940, he had risen to the rank of Hauptsturmführer of the Waffen-SS (Armed SS). In spring 1933, he joined the NSDAP.
On 9th November 1933, Albert Faßbender participated in the reunion of old fighters (the storming of the Feldherrenhalle in 1923) in Munich and he took part in parades on the occasion of the Reichsparteitag in Nuremberg in 1938. His regular unit in Berlin was the SS-Abschn. 3, SS-Totenkopf Kav.Rgt. 1. His adoptive father Nelson Faßbender became a party member on 1st May 1933.
In 1937, Albert intended to marry Edith von Puttkammer ‘for financial reasons‘. He had known his fiancée since 1926. He asked for permission to marry at the Race and Settlement Office. |
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Edith von Puttkammer was born in Berlin in 1903 and was baptized a Protestant. She came from the Hans-Wolf von Puttkammer family, attended the girls‘ high school in Stolp/Pomerania and the Reimann school in Berlin. Here, she was trained to be a dress-designer. She then completed a bookkeeping course at the Agricultural Chamber in Berlin. In 1933, she worked as secretary in the Fliegerlandesgruppe Berlin and from 1935 onwards, she worked in the Reich War Ministry. All members of her family were demonstrably ‘of Aryan descent‘, the fiancée was ‘healthy, fond of children‘ and ‘thrifty‘ and there was nothing to be said against the marriage. However, Albert rejected their child and, according to witnesses, he also maltreated his wife who eventually got divorced.
In 1949, Eugen Kogon writes in his book ‘Der SS-Staat‘ (‘The SS State‘): ‘SS-Sturmbannführer Albert Faßbender: of unknown descent, adoptive child of the owner of the famous Berlin chocolate factory Faßbender, good-for-nothing, boozer, spendthrift. He gets to know the commander of the so-called Reiter-SS (SS Cavalry), SS-Gruppenführer Fegelein, finances him, becomes battalion commander of the 1st cavalry regiment and, together with Fegelein, one of the worst SS criminals in Warsaw. Among other things, he ‘aryanizes‘ the world-famous furrier Apfelbaum together with Slawa Mirowska, the secretary of the escaped previous owner, from about 40 million Reichsmark down to 50,000 Reichsmark, he makes his mistress pregnant, has her husband, a Polish officer, arrested by Fegelein and the Gestapo and guns him down in his prison cell only a few days later in agreement with the Polish female who, some hours before, was given an unlimited power of attorney over his property. Then, he comes to France and commits... etc.‘
In the course of his SS career – in 1942, he was the adjutant of Sepp Dietrich in the SS-Führungshauptamt – several proceedings were taken against him because of crimes at the front like cases of looting and rapes as well as misuse of his position and a degrading treatment of the troops; in Berlin he was sued, among other things, for failure to pay compensations and intimidation of public servants. The persons affected finally went to the superior of Faßbender. As far as we know, the proceedings were all abandoned eventually.
Since 20th April 1943, Faßbender belonged to the 13. Waffen Geb.Div.-SS ‘Handschar‘, the proposal of promotion to the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer was rejected by the Reichsführer-SS.
In 1964, Albert Faßbender was buried in the Faßbender family grave in the New Cemetery.
In 1945, the old Nelson Faßbender took up the production of his chocolates again in the Czapski villa, since the factory in Lützowstraße in Berlin-Tiergarten had been destroyed. In 1968, shortly before his death, he married his housekeeper and sold the villa. The Neue Heimat, a house-building society, had the house pulled down and an old people’s home built on the site.
The Herz villa was looted after the end of the war, then the Red Cross used it as a refugee camp until the US Army set up a café in the villa. In 1950, the regional authority of Greater Berlin took over the property and used it as a guest house.
Today, the building and a part of the garden (7242 sq.m) are used as a holiday home for young people by the Tiergarten district authority which has leased the property since 1953. In 1972, the Zehlendorf district authority leased a part of the site (7572 sq.m) to the Alsen Yacht Club. In 1990, the garden of the Herz villa was put under a preservation order. In 1972, a one-storey flat roof building was constructed to the south of the villa. It served as the new superintendent’s building while the former superintendent’s building became the club house of the yacht club.
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Update: 20 August 2004
